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‘Benefits bestowed’? Education and British imperialism
BOOK REVIEWS how well P.N.G. has overcome the problems of access to current scholarship). In the South Pacific, despite the variety of cultural patterns, the relation between a centrally planned and constitutionally guaranteed objective of non-discrimination in opportunities for participation in learning, earning or decision making and the actual constraints upon the individual’s freedom of choice, becomes very accessible to observation. Christine Bradley’s paper on Education and Women’s Rights gives a very lucid account of the difficulties for individual women to understand or put into practice the best combination of their constitutional rights, statute precedent and traditional custom-law. One clear and seminal role for education here, is to permeate social vehicles with awareness of the special needs and rights of girls and women without which they cannot have the choice of exercising them. Within the specific studies of implementation of education plans, there are one or two provocative and wellobserved, if not innovative, studies which examine the educational process as it relates to the extremely varied local needs of people in P.N.G. Pani Tawaiyole writing about the outcomes of the Secondary Schools Community Extension projects (SSCEP) comments: ‘There are many and varied factors that act as “facilitators” or “stumbling blocks” for female leavers: individual factors like marital status, family factors like education of parents and parental expectations and attitudes, cultural factors like the traditional division of labour and of sex roles, and lastly, socio-economic factors like the availability of markets and headship of organisations in villages.’ Nevertheless, the SSCEP is generally regarded as a successful attempt to input basic education without the destruction of local community structure. Interesting case histories are those of the Huli Adult Literacy programmes of the South Highlands, where the precise targetting of educational priorities is notably successful, and also the discussions on Distance Learning as a partial solution to the conflicting demands made upon girls and woman (E.T. Apelis on Fiji and Samoa, or Beverley Martin and Josephine Imaroto on P.N.G.). There is, perhaps, once again a ‘small island’ history (some would say attitude) to education which throws emphasis on local community and individual learner needs as planning priorities, together, in this case, with the importance of self-help by the formation of women’s organisations. The role of N.G.0.s too. in stressing individual rights in terms of conscientisation can be seen as an interesting and necessary complement to constitutional and statutory rights, no less than to the demands of projects which promote G.D.P. targets or international trade balances. Quite ofen the book reveals even unconsciously a permeation of language and concept by notions of equality as an indifferent quotient of human capital, or of systems as fixed structures into which women or girls have to be inserted, rather than as evolving cultural interactions. Every discussion of the role of education itself is restricted by the language of ‘skills and language to enable’ despite the constant reference to experiences which demonstrate it to be the vehicle of perceived aims, parental aspiration, traditional patterns of control, individual ambition, no less than labour market and economic policy, which only demonstrates more fully the huge task the book seeks to address. BILL OZANNE Birmingham
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‘Benefits Bestowed’? Education and British Imperialism: J. A. Mangan (ed.), Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 1988, 242pp., f29.95. This book is one of a series entitled Studies in Imperialism edited bv John M. MacKenzie. The general editor has himself written several volumes in the series, Propaganda and Culture for example which examines the use of theatre, cinema, societies, schools and popular juvenile literature in purveying concepts of imperialism, and an edited collection, Imperialism and Popular Culture which looks in detail at other vehicles such as Baden Powell’s scouting and the Empire Marketing Board. Other volumes in the series have titles such as Ephemeral vistas and At Duty’s Call: Study in Obsolete Patriotism. All of which is recorded here to indicate that the series is not concerned with the grand social, economic and political issues of the imperialist experience, but with the varieties of its manifestation, particularly in the home country. It is in the context of such a series that this volume on education and imperialism should be judged. To be fair however there are at least two essays in this collection which light upon major issues. In the first paper Richard Aldrich examines ‘Imperialism and the Study of History’. It may not have been entirely fortuitous that the period in which history became both a major university discipline and a popular school subject coincided with the heyday of imperialism in the half century before the first world war. Aldrich compares the academic writings of the turn of the century (Seeley, Egerton, Newton and Lucas) with the accounts written in the 1980s. a period evidently of post-imperial re-interpretation. Aldrich’s catalogue of relevant writing in both eras invites reflection on how much the purposes of history writing have altered over the years. This discussion is not developed however in this volume. The second paper which touches upon a major issue is the last essay by Clive Whitehead on ‘British Colonial Education Policy: a Synonym for Cultural Imperialism’. Now this, of course, is a familiar theme, and Whitehead’s analysis adds little to what has already been said in recent publications from, for example, Philip Altbach and Keith Watson. Blow by blow historical accounts will never resolve a question which is more about the meaning of education than the nature of imperialism. Schooling necessarily implies socialization into the culture of the schoolmaster and once mission societies had taken the king’s shilling in the form of government subventions they had to accept their place within an imperialist policy promoted (and from time to time changed) by government. The extent to which such schooling carried benefits beyond those of providing expatriate employers with an adequate workforce can be argued ad infinitum, but one does often have the feeling those who decry such benefits are perhaps among those who benefitted the most. The other papers in this volume concentrate on the white settlement empire rather than that of the Colonial Office. Ireland, Newfoundland, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa are included together with several essays on England. A range of educational levels is also examined: primary schools, prep. schools, secondary day schools, public schools (with Freemasonry colour) and one postsecondary vocational institute, the Colonial College which existed in Suffolk from 1885 to 1905. Deborah Gaitskell’s essay on black girls’ education in South Africa also raises the issue of links between mission education and imperialist
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objectives, and other papers (Sherrington and Connellan on secondary schools in Sidney, McCann on Newfoundland church schools and Coolahan on the Irish school system) point to an an alliance, however uneasy, between church and government imperialist policy. Only in Ireland was there resistance by the Catholic bishops to the anglicization of the curriculum, but this after they had wholly given in on the issue of the language of instruction, choosing to support the imposition of the imperial language. In his introduction J. A. Mangan tries, less than successfully, to find a common thread to what is a disparate
REVIEWS collection of papers, but he is wise also to point out the value of disparity. Concepts of imperialism impinged on different levels of education in a variety of ways. In this collection we have indications of some of these ways although, with the exception of John Coolahan on educational policy in Ireland, most of the papers appear to fit fairly well into the apparent culture of this series which demonstrates the fascination of some of the ephemera of imperialist and educational history. BRIAN GARVEY Universityof Leeds
87
‘Benefits Bestowed’? Education and British Imperialism: J. A. Mangan (ed.), Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 1988, 242pp., f29.95. This book is one of a series entitled Studies in Imperialism edited bv John M. MacKenzie. The general editor has himself written several volumes in the series, Propaganda and Culture for example which examines the use of theatre, cinema, societies, schools and popular juvenile literature in purveying concepts of imperialism, and an edited collection, Imperialism and Popular Culture which looks in detail at other vehicles such as Baden Powell’s scouting and the Empire Marketing Board. Other volumes in the series have titles such as Ephemeral vistas and At Duty’s Call: Study in Obsolete Patriotism. All of which is recorded here to indicate that the series is not concerned with the grand social, economic and political issues of the imperialist experience, but with the varieties of its manifestation, particularly in the home country. It is in the context of such a series that this volume on education and imperialism should be judged. To be fair however there are at least two essays in this collection which light upon major issues. In the first paper Richard Aldrich examines ‘Imperialism and the Study of History’. It may not have been entirely fortuitous that the period in which history became both a major university discipline and a popular school subject coincided with the heyday of imperialism in the half century before the first world war. Aldrich compares the academic writings of the turn of the century (Seeley, Egerton, Newton and Lucas) with the accounts written in the 1980s. a period evidently of post-imperial re-interpretation. Aldrich’s catalogue of relevant writing in both eras invites reflection on how much the purposes of history writing have altered over the years. This discussion is not developed however in this volume. The second paper which touches upon a major issue is the last essay by Clive Whitehead on ‘British Colonial Education Policy: a Synonym for Cultural Imperialism’. Now this, of course, is a familiar theme, and Whitehead’s analysis adds little to what has already been said in recent publications from, for example, Philip Altbach and Keith Watson. Blow by blow historical accounts will never resolve a question which is more about the meaning of education than the nature of imperialism. Schooling necessarily implies socialization into the culture of the schoolmaster and once mission societies had taken the king’s shilling in the form of government subventions they had to accept their place within an imperialist policy promoted (and from time to time changed) by government. The extent to which such schooling carried benefits beyond those of providing expatriate employers with an adequate workforce can be argued ad infinitum, but one does often have the feeling those who decry such benefits are perhaps among those who benefitted the most. The other papers in this volume concentrate on the white settlement empire rather than that of the Colonial Office. Ireland, Newfoundland, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa are included together with several essays on England. A range of educational levels is also examined: primary schools, prep. schools, secondary day schools, public schools (with Freemasonry colour) and one postsecondary vocational institute, the Colonial College which existed in Suffolk from 1885 to 1905. Deborah Gaitskell’s essay on black girls’ education in South Africa also raises the issue of links between mission education and imperialist
88
BOOK
objectives, and other papers (Sherrington and Connellan on secondary schools in Sidney, McCann on Newfoundland church schools and Coolahan on the Irish school system) point to an an alliance, however uneasy, between church and government imperialist policy. Only in Ireland was there resistance by the Catholic bishops to the anglicization of the curriculum, but this after they had wholly given in on the issue of the language of instruction, choosing to support the imposition of the imperial language. In his introduction J. A. Mangan tries, less than successfully, to find a common thread to what is a disparate
REVIEWS collection of papers, but he is wise also to point out the value of disparity. Concepts of imperialism impinged on different levels of education in a variety of ways. In this collection we have indications of some of these ways although, with the exception of John Coolahan on educational policy in Ireland, most of the papers appear to fit fairly well into the apparent culture of this series which demonstrates the fascination of some of the ephemera of imperialist and educational history. BRIAN GARVEY Universityof Leeds